Health Insurance Deductibles Doubled in 7 Years, Study Finds
By ANN CARRNSCommonwealth Fund
1/27/12 | Updated Headline adjusted to more accurately reflect the article.
If you’ve seen your health insurance premiums increase along with your deductible, you’re not alone. A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund shows just how much more consumers are paying for employer-provided health insurance.
Total premiums — the amount paid by both employers and workers combined — for family coverage rose 50 percent from 2003 to 2010, to nearly $14,000 a year, the study found. (The fund is a private foundation that researches health policy issues. The report includes an interactive map showing premium increases by state.)
Another View: Market reforms will not result in health care for all in Maine
Yesterday at 12:00 AMFederal and state programs will not achieve the savings promised by a single-payer system.
By JULIE PEASE, M.D.For two years, while great effort has been spent debating health care reforms, costs for health insurance have continued to spiral out of control. Contrary to the assertions of Sen. Deborah Sanderson in a Dec. 30 column ("Legislature is tackling the causes of Maine's high health care costs"), there is simply no evidence to suggest that increasing competition in the for-profit insurance market will control health care costs, just as there is no evidence to suggest that federal reforms will be able to bring costs under control.
http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/market-reforms-will-not-result-in-health-care-for-all-in-maine_2012-01-30.html?searchterm=pease
The New Health Law Needs to Be Repealed, Expanded, and Replaced—So Long As It Doesn’t Have a Mandate
Last week’s State of the Union speech was notable because the President hardly mentioned the new health care reform law.Avoiding what is supposed to be the centerpiece domestic accomplishment of President Obama’s first term stuck out like a sore thumb.
He said almost nothing because the Obama team simply doesn’t know what to say.
http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-health-law-needs-to-be-repealed.html
LePage health care proposalis shortsighted and costly
Yesterday at 12:00 AMDr. Laurel Coleman
The proposal by Gov. Paul LePage to eliminate health care coverage for extremely poor adults is shortsighted, and will result in a significant shift of costs to our communities and hospitals. More importantly, it will lead to increased suffering and shorter lives.
http://www.kjonline.com/opinion/lepage-health-care-proposalis-shortsighted-and-costly_2012-01-29.html
A Spoonful of Sugar: On the Affordable Care Act
Bernard Avishai | January 25, 2012
It is hard to read Remedy and Reaction, Paul Starr’s remarkable chronicle of the hundred-year effort to legislate universal health insurance in the United States, without recalling Robert Gibbs’s tortured quip that Democrats who’ve denounced the Obama White House for having knuckled under to Republican principles or intimidation “ought to be drug-tested.” Nobody with a sense of history—that is, nobody who reads Starr’s book—could doubt how sensible and brave was the president’s effort to drive the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 through Congress. Nobody with a feel for the present moment should doubt how imminent is the threat to the act, how urgent it is for progressive Democrats to rally around Obama—and without all the condescending qualifications that “independents,” who flock away from allegedly weak or incompetent leaders, interpret as contempt.
Medical spas are booming
They offer a variety of spa services using medical devices, and they are growing in popularity. But it’s up to the client to ask the right questions.
Pingree: LePage's Medicaid proposal 'illegal'
Posted: 10:21 AMUpdated: 10:36 AM
AUGUSTA — Gov. Paul LePage's proposal to ask the federal government to allow Maine to reduce eligibility forMedicaid is "illegal" and isn't the answer to Maine's budget crisis, U.S. Rep.Chellie Pingree, D-1st District, said this morning.
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